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Tsukiyama Shuu stood in front of his floor length mirror for about the fifth time that day. He wore nothing but a small pair of black silk briefs that clung to his skin almost too closely. Shuu’s fingers glided over his pale flesh, gripping chunks of his skin in random parts all over his body. First, he grabbed his biceps, which hung in a manner that made Shuu cringe. Then his hands moved to grasp the pudge that sat at his hips and above his waistline. It was soft and gentle in his hands, seemingly too innocent to be the main cause for Tsukiyama’s current grief. Tearing his hands from his stomach, they glided to his thighs, stained and scarred with stretch marks underneath the briefs that did not fit him quite the way they used to. A soft sigh escaped his lips as he released the skin of his thighs, which snapped back to its rightful place on his legs. Tsukiyama could not break his eyes from the mirror as he once again returned his stare to the entirety of his body.
He could never really remember exactly when his body had gotten this way. His body, which was once fit and toned with muscle as he fought alongside his leader and lover, Kaneki Ken, was now a mass of scars and pudge in too many areas to be comfortable. After Shuu had moved back into the flat that he had given to Kaneki as a base and training grounds, the half-ghoul had insisted that he stay home from certain missions and often came home with gifts of sweets to please him. While Shuu would usually insist that he only accepted the gifts out of good manners, he knew now, staring at his reflection in the mirror, that it would be a poorly judged lie. No one would believe him if he said such a thing when questioned about his appearance now. Not that anyone ever asked him about his weight or size, but he could only assume that was because Kaneki threatened anyone who dared to mention it. His dear lover seemed to have a wordless understanding that Shuu was sensitive about the topic, and he was very over protective and cautious about his feelings.
Now Shuu felt he could no longer avoid the topic. His cheeks stained with pink, flushed from hours of crying, his lover not due to be home for at least another day from a big mission, it seemed impossible for him to not have some kind of negative outburst upon staring at himself. And so Tsukiyama Shuu stood expressionless in front of his mirror for hours and hours and hours, until he simply could not stand any longer and collapsed to his knees.
That is how Kaneki Ken found his lover when he returned home from his mission early at two in the morning after being gone for two days. When he had left the two days prior, he had already been worried sick about his lover, as he seemed to be much more emotional than usual, mumbling under his breath as Kaneki had packed up his things, “Could you please not go?” The half ghoul had simply told his lover that he wished he could stay with him, but things needed to happen whether he liked it or not. He had promised to be home as soon as possible, to be very careful while he was gone, and to return home to him with a gift like he always did. Tsukiyama did not keep him from his mission, as he would never impose on him in such a manner, and allowed him to leave with a kiss and a promise to be safe. The half ghoul made sure the mission finished ahead of schedule so that he could stop at his lover’s favorite pastry shop before heading home again, unconcerned about anything except seeing his lovers’ smiling face once again.
Unfortunately, when Kaneki returned to the home that he now shared with Tsukiyama, that is not what he came home to. As he opened the door to the apartment, he found all of the lights on in the bottom half the house with no sign of his lover, while all of the lights in the upper half of the house were completely shut off. He quickly put his present down on the coffee table and leapt up the staircase to the second floor, dashing to their bedroom and slamming the door open. He found Tsukiyama on his knees staring down at the floor in the darkness, no words leaving his mouth as Kaneki opened the door.
“Tsukiyama?” Kaneki asked desperately as he flicked on the lights to their bedroom and walked back over to where his lover had crumbled onto the floor. He carefully sat down behind his lover and gently placed his hands on his shoulders, causing the ghoul to jump slightly at the contact, before rubbing his hands gently up and down the smooth skin beneath his palms. Kaneki had a feeling he knew what had happened, but he knew that if he said anything now it might make things worse for his lover.
After sitting in a fragile silence for a few minutes, Tsukiyama mumbled something under his breath on dry vocal chords in broken English. When Kaneki did not respond, the ghoul turned slightly and spoke gently, “You belong with someone better than this, mon amour.”
Kaneki’s only response to the comment was a gentle sigh. He understood his lovers’ worries and that he felt insignificant in their relationship. Kaneki had tried desperately to get him to understand his feelings, but he also knew that the darkest places of a ghouls mind are unreachable by words. “Tsukiyama, please, won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
Tsukiyama slowly turned around to face his half ghoul with a look that horrified Kaneki. His face bore a grim smirk, one that reeked of abandonment and self-hatred, a look that Kaneki knew far too well, as his lover had learned it from him. “Kaneki, what do you notice is different about me?” Kaneki quirked an eyebrow in curiosity and parted his lips to answer, but Tsukiyama interrupted him. “Mon amour, I am scarred, stretched, and lumpy. I am no longer muscular and slim and magnifique comme vous. I am not beautiful. I am not good enough for you. Look,” Tsukiyama uttered in disgust, grabbing his hips from under his briefs, revealing purple and pink raised stretch marks upon his pale skin. “You deserve la persona più bella, amore. That person is not me.”
Kaneki seemed to stare endlessly into Tsukiyama’s eyes once he finished speaking, and his gaze almost made him cringe in embarrassment at such eyes staring at him. Suddenly, Kaneki lifted the ghoul up in his arms to place him delicately on his feet in front of him. Tsukiyama protested at the action, smacking at Kaneki’s arms to put him down before his feet touched the ground. He once again stared into the mirror at his reflection and looked down in disappointment…to find Kaneki on his knees in front of him. His lips pressed to his shaking, scarred thighs, in a gesture of complete and absolute reverence.
“Tsukiyama, do you know what I think?” Kaneki asked in a gentle voice, as he pressed his voice into the soft abundant flesh of his thighs. His lips moved delicately across his inner thighs, lapping in reassuring strokes as he traversed from his thighs to his plush hips and waist. Tsukiyama’s body could not help but tremble under the extremely sensitive attention that his lover was giving him. “I think that these thighs are beautiful. I think that these hips are beautiful. I think that you are beautiful,” Kaneki uttered as he caressed all of the places that Tsukiyama hated most. Upon standing once more, Kaneki looked into his lover’s eyes, the wordless plea of a broken ghoul evident on his face. Kaneki smiled softly, a look that only made Tsukiyama melt a little more in both pain and compassion. “I know that my words can’t change how you view yourself, Shuu, but I would never want you to think I could not love you because of how you look. Because you are so beautiful, toned or squishy, soft or firm, innocent or not, I fell in love with you. I will always love you,” Kaneki spoke firmly as he pressed his face into his lover’s soft neck, pressing gentle butterfly kisses up and down to his collarbone.
Tsukiyama could not contain the tears that escaped his dry and tired eyes. A night of intense terror and anxiety had left him wrung out of emotions and feeling stretched thin like an old rubber band, but the love Kaneki was pouring into him was filling him to the brim. Wordlessly he pressed his face into the white of his lover’s hair, his weak arms barely able to surround the half ghoul who embraced him. Breathing in the deep, rich scent that he emanated, Shuu felt dregs of life returning to him. He knew that he could not view himself in the glorified light that Kaneki saw him in just yet, it was much too soon for him to embrace that image of himself, but he could relax his anxious thoughts and fears of abandonment. Kaneki was not so shallow or cruel, and he could trust him to take care of him until he had once again returned to his confident old self. Regardless of his appearance, Shuu simply needed some support from his lover to help wash away his anxieties about his body.
Shuu spoke few words for the rest of that night. Kaneki had carried his lover to their bed and made gentle love to him for hours on end, savoring each inch of the ghoul and worshipping all the places that made Shuu anxious. Every time Shuu seemed to even slightly tense up, Kaneki would stop and make sure his fragile lover was comfortable, to which Shuu would just nod and cover his face with his hands in embarrassing waves of emotion. The night was long and arduous, but neither ghoul intended to stop and break the light atmosphere between them, simply desperate to be in each other’s arms, surrounded by their love only. As the two ghouls drifted into a gentle slumber, both could not think of anyone or anywhere they would rather be, slowly but surely giving themselves up to each other, until nothing remained but the soft caress of skin against skin in reassuring embrace.